Welcome back,
readers and writers.
Well, Spring has
sprung, and we are on our way to hot, humid days ahead. We had a good turnout for
this meeting, with 12 attendees, including 2 newcomers. We welcome Ally Simx
and Pablo Vannucci, and we hope you enjoyed your visit. Of the 12 in attendance,
10 had work to share.
Our co-host Ernie
Ovitz led off the reading portion with another excerpt from his latest
work, The Crucible. The death of ‘El Patrone’, the boss of the
Chicago Mob, His funeral was attended by all the upper echelon gangsters
from Chi-Town as they came to Sarasota, Florida. A lavish banquet was held at a prominent upscale
hotel and convention center. Ernie was masterful in his attention to the
individual actions, which reflected the inner thoughts and desires of those seeking
to profit from the old man’s death. Ernie, are you a ‘Made Man’? You kind of
think like one.
Scott
Anderson continues in
his study of Haiku. Tonight, he brought us a group of poems that once again
made us use our visualization skills. Each person sees, feels, or understands
the short poems differently. Scott recently had one of his poems accepted for
international publication in a noted Haiku site. Keep us in the loop, Scott.
As always, Don
Westerfield kept us enthralled with two poems written in his fascinating style.
His look back at past events is always invigorating. In Sailing to the
Moon, we could see the bright full moon hanging above the water as we
guided our little sailboat toward the silver orb. We felt the salt spray and
wind in our faces, smelled the ocean’s salty brine, and recalled our days as lovers watching the heavenly orb from earth. As Don read The Nature of Things, we
see the man behind the words as he looks at those things outlined in the world
around us. Why do Salmon swim upstream to spawn? Why can an apple grow on a pear
tree? And why do things happen in an order? It’s the nature of things.
Roberta
Molero continues her
journey into the world of prose with Chapter Two of The Reluctant Heiress.
Young Jennifer recently graduated from college. On that day, her parents revealed that she was adopted. Although she loved them and they loved her, she set
out on a quest to find her birth parents. She began a journey from her lifetime
home in New York City to track down her beginnings in rural Pennsylvania. The trip, her first alone, opens up a new and strange world. Will she soon discover something, or will the Culture Shock be too much? Her
first encounter is with a woman in the Post Office. Was the strange look she
got because she was a stranger, or was it a look of recognition? Her adventure in
procuring a night’s lodging triggered caution within her. Stay tuned for more
adventure.
Robots! Now
that I have your attention, can you imagine a robot so much like a
human you can’t tell the difference? Well, Bruce Haedrich can. Bruce
writes of a robot, humanoid, terrestrial, or whatever you want to call it, that
has all the attributes of a human. Physically, she is flawless, beautiful of
face and body; intellectually, well-informed and ultra-intelligent, as a
supercomputer instilled its knowledge into her brain. And I hear she’s damn
good in bed, too. What more could you want? H’mm, I hear there are some
issues, especially with our narrator’s human girlfriend. She seems to think
there’s something wrong with our current model. Could it be she’s not really
human, but just a robot?
Are we really
going to Mars? Gary Conkol has already been there in his book, Martian
Contact–Interplanetary Similarities. This is his second book in the
ENATAU (Emerging New Age of the Technology-Assisted Utopia) series. A team of
scientists is stationed at an outpost on Mars. Among their many accomplishments
are a few discoveries of artifacts belonging to previous inhabitants. Who are
these beings? Are they truly Martians? Whoever they were, they were highly
advanced in technology and had a sophisticated society. They looked surprisingly
like humans, but a common trait among their species was a peculiarity in their
eyes. Most, if not all of them, had two different colored eyes. A rare occurrence
on earth, but….
Short stories
are a wonderful way to get your reading done in the free moments of your day. Danny
Spurlock is a masterful storyteller and writes enchanting short stories.
Tonight’s offering, Simple Interest, tells of a young man,
married and successful, who, on a visit with his father, returns with a cupboard
full of baking pans and equipment for bread-making. His wife asks, “Why did you
drag home all this junk?” his simple answer is, “It’s a family tradition.”
On his first visit with our group, Ally Simx read from his latest work, a Sci-Fi adventure. Claire Sparks is a leader fighting in a future revolution. The stress and fatigue of the war have driven her to use a powerful drug, to which she is now addicted. She seeks the counsel of her mentor, Findly, in an hour of depression.
On his first visit, Pablo Vannocci
also read the opening from SKYKR, his current Sci-Fi adventure. In
this opening chapter, Pablo goes to great lengths to show how birth might look
to a fetus with awareness of the world around it. His graphic descriptions took
the listeners from the darkness of a womb to the exploding light of a new
environment, never before known to the fetus. Powerful, exciting, and
different. Damn fine writing, Pablo.
Wow! From the Chicago Mob to a first-time
traveler and on to Mars. From all-out war to the confusion of birth. We did
some traveling tonight. Isn’t that the wonder of reading? We can travel to
Mars, fight in a World War, and dine with mobsters without leaving our easy
chair. Oh yeah, we can snuggle up with the robot of our dreams when our eyes
grow heavy. Ain’t this a wonderful world. Until our next meeting, May 20th
at the Nokomis Fire House, READ, Read, read some more, then WRITE, Write, and
write something you'd like to read to us.
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